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An intense low-pressure system brought stormy conditions to south-west Ireland and parts of England and Wales on 21st October.

Storm Brian – the second named storm of the season – crossed the Irish Sea bringing winds of up to 78 mph and flooding to parts of Ireland. Many flights and ferry crossings were cancelled due to the high winds and rough seas

This extreme weather system came just six days after Storm Ophelia swept across Ireland, resulting in three deaths.

In mid-October, dozens were left dead and injured as hundreds of wildfires swept central and north Portugal, as well as the north-western Galicia region of Spain.

At least 40 people were killed and 50 injured as the hot (>30°C), dry weather took its toll on the landscape. Conditions were worsened by Hurricane Ophelia as its strong winds fanned and spread the flames.

Ex-Hurricane Ophelia brought wet weather and gusts exceeding 90 mph to the UK and Ireland on 16th October, the 30th anniversary of the Great Storm of 1987.

The stormy remnants of Ophelia brought windy conditions to many parts, especially northern and western regions, causing widespread damage to infrastructure, uprooting trees, ripping off roofs and causing power outages to 330,000 homes and businesses. Three people were killed in incidents related to the storm, with two being struck by falling trees. It has been declared Ireland’s worst storm on record.

On the 16th October people across the UK turned their heads to the sky as it looked like an Instagram filter had been applied in real life. Following the passage of ex-hurricane Ophelia, the colour of the sun and the sky turned eerie shades of oranges and reds. Southerly winds not only bought warm, tropical air to part of southern UK, it also bought dust from the Sahara and smoke from forest fires in Spain and Portugal to the UK.

The latest Update from the World Meteorological Organization indicates that weak La Niña conditions may develop (50-55% probability) in the next few months for the second consecutive year, influencing global weather.

La Niña, also known as a ‘cold event’, refers to the large-scale cooling of the ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific along with changes in the tropical atmospheric circulation.

The RMetS' FutureLearn course, developed with the University of Reading, ‘Come Rain or Shine: Understanding the weather’, is now in its second year, and continues to be run three times a year.

Developed from the course we offer to secondary geography teachers, 'Come Rain or Shine' helps people to further understand the physical processes behind the weather. The stand-alone course complements the ‘Learn About Weather’ course, but you do not need to have completed that course before signing up for ‘Come Rain or Shine’.

The Met Office is celebrating a century of scientific forecasting, from the experiments carried out in the trenches of the First World War to the Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) forecast system used today.

Dominica, an island in the Caribbean, was devastated by Hurricane Maria, which made landfall overnight on 18th September. Maria then went on to hit the southernmost Virgin Islands and completely took out Puerto Rico's energy grid, which could take months to fix.

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theWeather Club is full of interesting and educational content that captures the many faces of the weather – its beauty, its power, its occasional absurdity and its fragility in the face of human activity.